Oops. John McCain shows up at to campaign with Tammy Duckworth’s opponent, fresh from a visit to Walter Reed, the nearby hospital where Duckworth, a double amputee, was treated, and proceeds to praise the “brave young [soldiers] who have served and sacrificed so much.”
“Many of them have lost limbs, as you know.”
Have you received one of those robo calls in Maryland or Tennessee about whether you support rights for terrorists or medical research experiments on unborn babies?
The Virginia madness continues…
First, we have some video for you of the Attack of the Allen Staffers over at Election Central. Give it a watch.
And if you think this campaign is getting bitter now, just wait. Both the NRSC and DSCC are dumping a combined total of total of over $3.5 million into the race — with only a week to go.
Webb, meanwhile, appears buoyed by all those new polls showing him up — he’s on the air with a new spot which doesn’t mention Allen and sounds like Webb’s closing argument.
Late Update: John Aravosis has a great series of stills of Stark being put in a choke hold and hurled to the floor. Aren’t there laws against attacking someone like this? I mean, first they call a guy macaca, then they’re assaulting people asking questions. I mean, sheesh, what happens next? He just starts picking off dudes in the audience from behind the podium with a TEC-9? That’s one dangerous campaign.
TPM Reader JL chimes in …
Last night on Olbermann’s Countdown, Iraq vet Paul Rieckhoff tossed off a line about politics and Iraq that went something like “politicians in DC seem more interested in attacking each other than attacking the enemies of this country.”
Couldn’t this be a fairly well-stated retort to Bush’s attempt to pile-on Kerry for his poorly worded comment? All Dems (and not Kerry) should flood the cable talk shows after Bush speaks with remarks that go like this: “Republicans would rather attack political opponents than the enemies of America. Word games and smear attacks are really all they know how to do. If they knew how to attack America’s enemies, wouldn’t they have done more than stay the course for the last three years?”
Just a thought.
A good one.
Okay, TPM Election Central’s Greg Sargent got Mike Stark on the phone, the guy who got tackled and put in a head lock by those Allen staffers. An update and quotes shortly.
I’m curious why more isn’t being made of this. It’s being widely reported that on the order of Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki, the US have ended a five day old military blockade of the Sadr City section of Baghdad. But that cordon was in place to help find the recently abducted US soldier. So it sounds a lot like on Maliki’s say-so we’ve essentially called off the search. Is President Bush being asked about this?
Stark speaks; and he’s pressing charges against the Allen staffers too.
Mike Stark, the fellow who was treated like a tackling dummy by Senator George Allen’s staff today, writes a letter demanding that Allen fire his staffers and saying he’s pressing charges against Allen himself.
“I spent four years in the Marine Corps. I’ll be damned if I’ll let my country be taken from me by thugs that are afraid of taking responsibility for themselves.”
The video clip posted here from CNN gives a better view of exactly what happened. As far as I can tell there was no heckling or raised voices before the Allen staffers started grabbing and pushing the guy.